US medical system – devayani tirthali

Flebotomist: You are dehydrated that is why I can’t find your vein.
Me: *Close eyes, take a deep breath and get ready for the dialogue*
F: If you don’t drink coffee and drink a bottle of water we would not have this problem.
Me: I do not drink coffee actually.
F: *silence*
Me: I drank water yesterday and in the morning as you mentioned last time so this time it would be easier.

F: You are drinking too much water and diluting yourself.

I have had this exact same dialogue with this one. I have had similar dialogues with other flebotomist. My entire life I have had problems where people can’t find my veins. It has exasurbated after I came to US. In 2014 had a harrowing experience wher I was poked and proded 12 times on both hands, and back of my palms to the point where I was about to faint. I very curteously asked her to remove the needle (which was not drawing any blood) so that I can faint without hurting her. She was mad at me for botching her 12th attempt.

I thought it was because I am perpetually dehydrated since I moved to US or becaue I am now old. Untill I finally found a person who used to insert needle in a single swift movement and draw blood like it was no big deal. She also said encoragingly everytime – “you did really well”. I really liked her. She moved to some other clinic and I am back to the dialogues. She told me to ask for butterfly needle. It hasn’t helped with others.

In the meanwhile I went to India where my neighborhood doctor did a clean blood draw without any butterfly. with just a plain syringe that he emptied in the vial. It was one of the smoothest blood draws in a while.

Now that I have experienced two really good flebotomists, I have realized that it is not my age or being perpetually dehydrated, or the equipment. It is just plain skill. I wonder then if the whole back and forth about me doing this to myself by drinking coffee, not drinking water, or drinking too much of it, is their way to push the blame because they can’t do their jobs to even a basic acceptable level.

The first one that made my hands black and blue, came to work after a weekend long training, I was told. I still can’t get over the fact. Looks like she did not learn these Phlebotomist Commandments in her training. The most important for me – thou shall not prick more than twice. Back off and call somebody else.

I actually did not believe the weekend training thing. But just a quick google search opened my eyes. The site How to become phebotomist says that only two states need a certification to be a phlebotomist. what? 😨 So it is worse than I thought. The certification, which is voluntury in other states, seems to be a simple 2 day training like this on phlb.com.

I cannot believe my eyes. My doctor looks at wikipedia to tell me about what ails me. My phlebotomists might be anybody that picked up the skill over the weekend. Who am I supposed to trust in this system?

One fine day instead of going to my class in the afternoon I decided to go home. I was feeling very weak. I walked as fast as I could like a true NewYorker. If only I can reach home in time and lie down, I will be fine, I kept telling myself. The train took forever to come. When it reached 157th street station, it stopped and people were asked to vacate the train. There was an emergency in the previous train so the trains behind were all stuck too. By this time I was feeling pretty sick and couldn’t get up and leave. A lady asked me if I was feeling ok, and called some train personnel. He called 911.

It felt like it was forever before the FDNY guys came down. The first thing they did was whip out a form and start asking questions … demographic questions not medical ones. If I was well enough to answer such questions would I need the emergency service in the first place?

Suddenly they decided to take me out to the ambulance, probably because the train needed to move. At last, I thought, they are going to take me to the hospital and I might not die after all. The ambulance was parked just outside the station and it remained there for next 10-15 minutes. The question answer session resumed. I never realized how long my first and last name are before that day. Believe me it is beyond frustrating to talk when you are fainting, then to repeat the name because your’s is an Indian name and worse … one of the most difficult last name in India and one of the longest Indian first name. I gave them my wallet that had the college id card hoping it would satisfy basic questions like name, affiliation, insurance info etc. I then gave them my phone with my boss’s phone number on it. Hoping that they would ask him the questions and I could continue fainting in peace.

When my boss picked up the phone, the FDNY guy asked, ‘is this person your employee?’. John, being a good boss he is thought it was an information mining call and refused to say anything unless told why they needed the information. The FDNY guys did not tell them it was an emergency, probably in some convoluted way an effort not to invade my privacy.

All this time the second FDNY guy was trying to put an oxygen mask on my face. The mask didn’t work and it made me nautious so I was trying to remove it. This was going on parallely to the Q&A and fainting. I startd to question why we were still parked and not moving towards the hospital. The answer was totally baffling. The FDNY guy who was filing out the questionaire was the person who would drive the ambulance so unless I ‘co-operated’ I wasn’t going anywhere.

By this time, the second person in the ambulance, the one with the oxygen mask, started interjecting every few minutes, saying “I can’t get her pulse. hurry.” It is a miracle I survived those 15 minutes in the ambulance in spite of his constant reminder that I might be dying.

Add a third person in the mix now. The person from the MTNY. He came with his own questionaire and started asking me the same questions. They had to cover their behinds too since it happened while I was travelling in their train. I had to answer the same questions all over again. I guess the FDNY couldn’t share that information for fear of breaching confidentiality. 😉

Finally we reached the hospital….. ER hallway more like it. Somebody put a pulse monitor on my finger. I was relieved that somebody was monitoring me even if I was in the hallway. Nothing happened for a long time and then somebody came and ‘borrowed’ the pulse monitor. Never came back.
After lying down in the hallway for a long time I automatically started feeling better. (I was amazed at my capacity to survive in the face of adversity 😉 ) But now ER doctor wouldn’t let me go. She needed to check if I had internal bleeding. Another long wait, in a room this time, after which I left for home at 10 pm with an unreadable pink paper and without any diagnosis.
After 15 months and 3 hefty medical bills I still don’t know what happened that evening and why I am still alive 🙂
Though the experience was traumatic, the whole story seems like a funny episode in a comedy movie script. Anybody wants the movie rights?

Tag: US medical system

Butterfly needles, blood draws, and other things

My brush with emergency services in NYC